The steel cutting event signifies a major milestone for the project, the world’s first, to proceed to its construction phase to meet its commissioning schedule in 2015.

The ceremony was led by PETRONAS’ President and Group CEO, Tan Sri Dato’ Shamsul Azhar Abbas and was jointly hosted by Technip’s President & CEO Mr. Thierry Pilenko and DSME’s President & CEO Mr. Jaeho Ko.

PETRONAS signed the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning contract for the project with the Technip and DSME consortium in June 2012.

The floating LNG facility will be located in Malaysia’s Kanowit gas field, 180 kilometres offshore Sarawak and will have the capacity to produce 1.2 mtpa of LNG per year.

Once operational, the facility is expected to change the landscape of the LNG business where the liquefaction, production and offloading processes of LNG, previously only possible at onshore plants are now able to be carried out hundreds of kilometres away from land and closer to offshore gas sources.

As such, the facility will also play a significant role in efforts to unlock the gas reserves in Malaysia’s remote and stranded fields currently deemed uneconomical to develop and evacuate.